Young
men are deserting their homeland of Algeria by the thousands. Some
are being drawn north across the Mediterranean, others into
neighboring Libya, into the jihad. Which is why it’s slowly
becoming clear to Europeans that they need to take a look at Algeria,
Africa’s largest country by land mass but also among the
continent’s most unobtrusive nations. And what they see in the
North African country on the Mediterranean coast doesn’t bode well.

Bab
el Oued, a poor man’s district in the heart of the country’s
capital, Algiers, on the square of the three clocks: Today, on a
sunny Thursday in January, the whole world seemingly is out and about
because all the stores will be closed on holy Friday. Here and there
you will meet old women with white triangular scarves covering their
mouths and noses. The scarves taper to a point in front; the women
look like birds while wearing the traditional aâjars.

Two
men are sitting in a café. They are discussing politics. And they do
so without looking to the right or the left – a characteristic
precautionary measure in most nations run by dictatorships. The two
laugh uninhibitedly over a joke that is making the rounds: The
government has raised gas prices to prevent the unemployed from
immolating themselves.

Amid
the laughter, the 86-year-old Mohamed asks the German guest in a
threatening voice, "Are you secretly recording our conversation?"
He likes the answer: "You can search me if you want." Mohamed
grins and gives the foreigner a strawberry candy from his pocket.

You
can speak openly in Algeria. Daily newspapers such as El Watan go
very far in their criticism of the regime. Nevertheless, according to
Amnesty International’s information, journalists and human rights
activists land in prison because of political statements and are
tortured in the secret police’s dungeons – at least witnesses say
so. No court is following up on their claims. For that reason,
Algeria is not a "safe country of origin" in the sense of German
constitutional law, even if Berlin would like to see it otherwise.

Old scores are being revived: Who betrayed whom, who overthrew whom?

Algeria
is drifting toward a severe political crisis. That’s also bad news
for Europeans because the Mediterranean country shares borders with
Libya and Mali, which are a war zone of al-Qaeda and Islamic State
(IS). The terrorists have also established themselves in the interior
of the country and are recruiting fighters. They can be read about
daily in the newspapers.

Every
couple of weeks, the plane of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika
takes off from Boufarik military airport heading toward one of the
country’s other airports. He isn’t on board. The 78-year-old head
of state, in office since 1999, is terminally ill. Doctors allow him
to fly only in rare cases. Regardless, the Airbus A340-500, equipped
with a medical station, bedroom and missile defense, must be flown
every now and then so that it remains in good working order.

The
men in the café in Bab el Oued laugh over another joke: Tapes of the
president’s tapped telephone conversations have surfaced – three
hours of silence. Mr. Bouteflika hasn’t appeared in public for
months. It is generally assumed that a military-political entourage,
and not he, is in charge of the government.

The
entourage has become nervous. The members’ power base is oil, but
its price has plunged within a year by almost 50 percent. Algeria has
some of the world’s largest oil and natural gas reserves and lives
almost exclusively from the export of the commodities. But the income
from the state energy sector has hardly been used to invest
domestically. Moreover, bureaucracy, state despotism and corruption
are scaring off foreign capital. As a result the economy is not
keeping pace with population growth. A quarter of Algerians are
unemployed; among young people with a college degree, almost half.
Three-fourths of the 40 million Algerians are under the age of
30, and their reality has three coordinates: poverty, frustration and
religion.

For
decades, the government had diverted money to buy social peace. Cheap
loans for the unemployed, wage increases, certificates of eligibility
to public housing magically appeared every time demonstrations and
strikes got the upper hand. But the government can’t do that
anymore: The money is gone, state revenues have been cut in half.
Social unrest, which continually flares up and occasionally gets out
of control and turns into riots, can no longer be pacified with manna
from the government.

The
state has already increased the price of gasoline and diesel by 20
percent – and that in a country where almost all transportation
takes place on roads. Almost weekly, the prices tags are adjusted
upwards on the market in the Bab el Oued district. Increasing with
the prices is anger toward those governing the country; those people
are called "the power." The word "mafia" can even be heard,
not only in proletarian cafés, but also in company offices and
artist studios and online. Who is meant by that?

Algeria’s
leadership emerged from decades of infighting among the factions
within Algeria’s National Liberation Front, which fought against
the French colonial power from 1954 until 1962. Today, an alliance
between the presidential palace and a group of military officers is
considered to be the inner circle of power, and those people also
share the sinecure of a state-directed economy. In the course of Mr.
Bouteflika’s fourth term in office, which began a year and a half
ago after a questionable election, his clique expanded its power. But
now new rivalries are flaring up. Mr. Bouteflika’s former
comrades-in-arms are publicly questioning his ability to govern.
Highly-decorated generals are landing in jail, and wounds from
earlier decades are being opened up in the press: Who betrayed whom,
who overthrew whom? The last survivors of the liberation war are
attacking each other.

In
other words, the regime’s historical legitimacy is crumbling, its
social-political legitimacy is ruined, and a democratic one virtually
doesn’t exist. Because of vote-buying, clientelism and
election-rigging, Algeria’s parliament is hardly taken seriously as
representing the people.